Henri Sauguet

80 notes clavecines, pour Wanda Landowska

All his life, Sauguet had been in touch with artists of different generations and backgrounds: composers of course, interpreters, choreographers and dancers, poets, actors, painters and decorators, film-makers… He often spoke of his many friendships as constituting, in his mind, a spiritual family, to which he had written many pages of occasion, tributes and testimonies (Prélude à une exposition de peinture, for a premiere at the Rive Gauche art-gallery in 1937; Toast pour Henry Barraud to celebrate his achievement within the French radio institutions; Berceuse and a Romance, written for the birthday of Yvonne de Casa Fuerte).

The 80 notes clavecines is a tribute to Wanda Landowska (1879-1959), written on her 80th birthday, a few weeks before she died. Until then, Sauguet had not thought of writing a major composition for her, unlike Manuel de Falla or Francis Poulenc. Only in 1962, he wrote Suite royale for Sylvia Marlowe, one of the American students of Wanda Landowska.



(translation Philippe Do)